Today in History – January 12, 2010 – 7.0 Magnitude Earthquake in Haiti. The earthquake struck a highly populated region of this impoverished Caribbean island approximately 17 km from the capital city of Port-au-Prince. Hundreds of thousands died,  many more injured, many buildings were destroyed or seriously damaged, infrastructures collapsed and millions became homeless and [...]

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Today in History – January 11, 1954 – Although radio weather broadcasts have been around since 1922, it was not until 1953 that BBC executives, gathered for a luncheon, introduced the idea of presenting a weather forecast on television. These BBC executives searched the Met Office and chose the 32-year-old George Cowling, a former Royal [...]

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Today in History – January 6, 1851 – Foucault physically demonstrates the rotation of the Earth. Now this isn’t so easy to do because the earth rotates pretty slowly. How slowly? Well, it takes a full day to go around once, eh? So in a minute it’s going to rotate about, oh, 0.0007 revolutions. Not [...]

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Today in history – December 11th, 1997 – the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change was signed. In 1992 the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted and was a major force in addressing the problem of global warming. As greenhouse gas levels rose around the world it became clear [...]

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Today in History – December 7, 1988 – 6.9 earthquake destroys Armenia, Spitak and kills over 60,000. It is reported that the entire population of Spitak died in this devastating earthquake, making it one of the most deadly earthquakes in human history. Partial blame was placed on the substandard infrastructure in Soviet-era buildings. The Soviet [...]

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